Stephen Victor Wilson

The case involves a father suing the City of West Covina and two police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after social workers removed his minor son from the home following an investigation into a bruise on the child's leg. The plaintiff alleged that the officers' actions violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights to familial association and constituted a warrantless entry into his home in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The court granted summary judgment to the city defendants on the Fourteenth Amendment claim, reasoning that the officers did not physically remove the child, make the removal decision, or otherwise directly interfere with the plaintiff's familial rights. It denied summary judgment on the Fourth Amendment claim due to disputed facts regarding consent to enter the home and the absence of any warrant or applicable exception such as exigent circumstances.

criminal lawcivil rightsfamily law

In Doe v. Match.com, the plaintiff, a former subscriber to the online dating service, sued Match.com in California state court seeking injunctive relief under Civil Code § 1770(a)(10) after alleging she was raped by another subscriber who was a serial sexual predator; she claimed the defendant failed to implement adequate screening procedures. The case was removed to federal court, where the plaintiff had sought a TRO and preliminary injunction to require screening. The district court held that the plaintiff lacked Article III standing to pursue injunctive relief because she had canceled her subscription after the assault, resubscribed solely to pursue litigation, and presented no evidence of a concrete, imminent threat of future injury from using the service to meet others, citing precedents like City of Los Angeles v. Lyons. As a result, the court remanded the case to Los Angeles County Superior Court rather than dismissing it. The ruling focused solely on justiciability and did not address the merits of the underlying claim.

procedure

The case involved Spa De Soleil, Inc., a cosmetics manufacturer, suing its insurer General Star Indemnity Co. for breach of contract after the insurer denied coverage and defense in a lawsuit by Issimo International over defective and undelivered cosmetic products. The court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment, finding no duty to defend or indemnify. The core reasoning was that the underlying claims alleged contractual breaches, defective products, and intentional misrepresentations rather than covered property damage from an occurrence, and that policy exclusions for the insured's products and work applied, even under the professional liability endorsement.

business & regulatoryproceduretorts & liability

The case involved actress Shirley Jones filing a class action against Corbis Corporation, an online provider of image copyright licenses, alleging that Corbis violated her statutory and common law rights of publicity by displaying sample photographs of her on its websites to market and sell licenses without her consent. Corbis moved for summary judgment on grounds including consent, First Amendment protection, and Copyright Act preemption, while Jones moved for partial summary judgment and class certification. The court granted Corbis's motion for summary judgment and denied Jones's motions. The core reasoning was that Jones manifested consent to the photographs through her conduct of posing on red carpets at events where she knew images would be taken, displayed, and distributed by photographers, rendering her claims invalid, and that she was not an adequate class representative because no licenses for the images at issue had been sold.

torts & liabilitycivil rightsbusiness & regulatory

The case involved Amini Innovation Corp. suing KTY International Marketing for copyright and design patent infringement after the defendant allegedly sold furniture copying the plaintiff's protected designs in its B40000, D40000, and E6500 collections. The defendant was served, agreed to be bound by a related judgment, but later failed to respond to settlement efforts or provide evidence after the stay was lifted, leading to entry of default. The court granted the motion for default judgment in part after weighing the Eitel factors and accepting the well-pleaded allegations as true, entering judgment for $151,000 in statutory damages, $25,081 in attorneys' fees, $346.66 in costs, and a permanent injunction against further sales of infringing goods. The damages were based on statutory minimums and per-work amounts justified by evidence of saved development costs, as actual lost revenues could not be determined due to lack of discovery.

business & regulatory

In Lavino v. Metropolitan Life Insurance, plaintiff Kelly Lavino sued MetLife under ERISA to obtain long-term disability benefits under her employer's welfare benefit plan after MetLife terminated benefits for fibromyalgia. The court had previously found MetLife abused its discretion in ending benefits under the plan's "own occupation" standard and remanded for review under the "any occupation" standard, including whether the disability was physical or psychiatric. MetLife determined the disability was psychiatric and thus limited to two years of benefits, but the court found this determination mistaken after reviewing the administrative record. The court concluded MetLife abused its discretion due to procedural irregularities and conflicts of interest, ordering payment of ongoing "any occupation" benefits for the physical disability.

labor & employment

The case involved homeowners suing their mortgage lender over claims arising from a 2007 home loan refinancing and subsequent foreclosure, primarily alleging that the lender fraudulently failed to pay off a promised car loan from the proceeds, resulting in repossession, along with related claims for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, failure to provide disclosures, elder abuse, emotional distress, and violations of California's unfair competition law. The court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss all twelve causes of action. The core reasoning centered on federal preemption under the Home Owner’s Loan Act for claims against the federally chartered savings bank, statutes of limitations barring certain claims, insufficient factual pleading for fraud and other torts, and the lack of recognized emotional distress recovery from purely economic harm.

business & regulatorypropertyproceduretorts & liability

In Nero v. Allison, a state prisoner convicted of selling cocaine base filed a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, alleging that the trial court violated his constitutional right to self-representation by denying his request to proceed pro se at the preliminary hearing. The district court denied the petition and dismissed the action with prejudice, adopting the magistrate judge's report and recommendation. The court held that no clearly established Supreme Court precedent recognizes a right to self-representation at preliminary hearings, and even assuming such a right, the petitioner's last-minute request on the day of the hearing was untimely and properly denied under existing case law.

criminal lawprocedure

This case is an interpleader action filed by Chase Investment Services Corp. to resolve competing claims by multiple parties to securities, specifically interest-only Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMOs), held in a brokerage account opened by Jon Divens on behalf of his law firm. Several defendants, including Amedraa LLC and Betts and Gambles, asserted crossclaims alleging that Divens and the firm had received the CMOs in escrow but misappropriated them by transferring the assets to hide them and retaining interest payments. Through stipulations, some CMOs were returned to their claimed owners, leaving disputes over accrued interest and related claims. The court made findings that escrow agreements existed, that Divens and the firm breached those agreements by failing to return the assets upon demand, and that the original owners were entitled to the CMOs and associated interest income based on evidence of the transfers and handling of the securities.

propertyproceduretorts & liability

In Martinez v. United States, a federal inmate at USP Victorville sued the United States and prison physician Dr. George Santini after Santini allegedly prescribed medication despite the plaintiff's known allergy, causing swelling of his eyelids, tongue, lips, and testicles. The amended complaint asserted claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Bivens, the Federal Tort Claims Act, and state tort law for intentional infliction of emotional distress, conspiracy, negligence, gross negligence, and deliberate indifference to serious medical needs. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation, granting the motions to dismiss in part by dismissing all claims against Santini, dismissing all claims against the United States except the third cause of action for negligence under the FTCA, and striking the request for punitive damages. The core reasoning was that claims against the individual employee were precluded by the exclusivity provision of the FTCA, certain statutes provided no private right of action, and punitive damages are unavailable against the United States under the FTCA.

criminal lawcivil rightsfederal powertorts & liability

In Doe v. Nestle, S.A., Malian plaintiffs brought a class action against Nestle, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland alleging they were subjected to forced labor on cocoa farms in Cote d'Ivoire and that the defendants aided and abetted violations of international law prohibitions on slavery, forced labor, and related abuses by maintaining supplier relationships and providing support to the farms. The plaintiffs asserted claims under the Alien Tort Statute, the Torture Victim Protection Act, state unjust enrichment law, and California unfair competition law. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), holding that the complaint failed to state a plausible claim because it did not identify well-defined and universally accepted rules of customary international law imposing liability on corporations for aiding and abetting such conduct, as required by Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, and the factual allegations did not meet the Iqbal/Twombly plausibility standard.

civil rightscriminal lawfederal power

This case involved the U.S. government's effort to forfeit four commercial properties that the claimants had purchased at least partly with funds traceable to currency structuring violations under 31 U.S.C. § 5324. The only contested issue at the jury trial was whether the claimants could establish the innocent-owner defense under 18 U.S.C. § 983(d)(3)(A), which requires that they were bona-fide purchasers who did not know and were reasonably without cause to believe the property was subject to forfeiture. The claimants contended that the defense is satisfied unless they had actual knowledge that the specific conduct would trigger forfeiture, but the court rejected that reading of the statute. The court held that the argument had not been timely raised before trial and was unsupported by the statutory text, legislative purpose, and precedent; the jury returned a verdict for the government.

criminal lawpropertyprocedure

The case involved Aaron Moultrie, a former U.S. Army soldier convicted by court-martial in 2003 of premeditated attempted murder and related offenses, who received a reduced sentence of confinement and was later placed on Mandatory Supervised Release (MSR) by the Army Clemency and Parole Board upon reaching his minimum release date. Moultrie filed a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 challenging the legality of his involuntary MSR placement, claiming the Board lacked statutory authority, that it improperly abrogated his liberty interest in good conduct time without due process, and that it unconstitutionally increased his punishment. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation in full, denied the petition on the merits, and dismissed the action with prejudice, holding that the military system authorized MSR as a form of conditional release, that good conduct credits were properly applied to advance the release date, and that no due process violation or unauthorized increase in punishment occurred.

criminal lawprocedurefederal power

In Alderson v. United States, plaintiffs who received a multi-million dollar qui tam award under the False Claims Act for reporting Medicare fraud sought a tax refund by recharacterizing the proceeds as capital gains rather than ordinary income after transferring partial interests to a family partnership. The court granted the government's motion for summary judgment and denied the plaintiffs' cross-motion, holding that the recovery must be taxed as ordinary income. The decision rested on the legal conclusion that a qui tam relator's share of an FCA settlement does not qualify as a capital asset because it arises from a statutory right to compensation for assisting in the government's enforcement action, not from any property interest or investment. The court emphasized that the undisputed facts showed the award was compensation for the relator's role in uncovering and litigating the fraud, without any basis for capital gains treatment under the tax code.

taxescriminal lawbusiness & regulatory

The case involved a high school student who was suspended after creating and posting a video on YouTube from her home that contained derogatory comments about a classmate. The student sued the school district and administrators under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the discipline violated her First Amendment free speech rights. The court granted summary adjudication to the plaintiff, holding that the off-campus speech could not be regulated because it did not cause or reasonably forecast a substantial disruption to school activities under the Tinker standard. The court also granted qualified immunity to the individual defendants on the claim for money damages.

free speechcivil rights

In Alberghetti v. Corbis Corp., plaintiffs Anna Maria Alberghetti and Bonnie Pointer, entertainers and California residents, sued Corbis Corporation, a photo-licensing company, alleging that Corbis violated their common-law and statutory rights of publicity by displaying and allowing searches of their images and names on its online catalog of photographs without permission; they also asserted an unjust enrichment claim based on the same facts. Defendant moved for summary judgment on the ground that the claims were time-barred. The court granted the motion, ruling that California's two-year statute of limitations for publicity rights actions applied and had expired. Under the single-publication rule, the limitations period began when the images were first posted on the website more than two years before the suit, and plaintiffs presented no evidence of a republication that would restart the clock.

torts & liabilityprocedure

This case involved investors who lost money in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme suing the U.S. government and the SEC under the Federal Tort Claims Act for negligence in failing to detect and stop the fraud despite regulatory opportunities. The court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. The core reasoning was that the discretionary function exception to the FTCA applied, as the SEC's investigative and enforcement decisions were discretionary actions susceptible to policy analysis rather than mandated by specific statutes or regulations.

business & regulatoryfederal powertorts & liability

In United States v. Vasquez, the defendants faced criminal charges of conspiracy and harboring illegal aliens for private financial gain under 8 U.S.C. § 1324 after being indicted in July 2009. They moved to suppress evidence from a warrantless entry and search of a residence on July 8, 2009, and a follow-up warranted search the next day, claiming the initial entry lacked probable cause or exigent circumstances and tainted the warrant. The court denied the motion to suppress, ruling that the defendants lacked standing to challenge the searches because they had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the residence. The core reasoning was that the house operated as a transient alien drop house with dozens of smuggled individuals cycling through daily, the defendants stayed only temporarily while working off smuggling debts without ownership or lease rights, and their situation did not qualify as that of overnight guests in a private home.

criminal lawimmigrationprocedure

This ERISA case involved plaintiff Ana Martinez seeking health insurance benefits from her employer-provided plan, administered by the Beverly Hills Hotel, to cover her son's severe disabilities resulting from a 2005 epileptic seizure and subsequent brain injury. The plan had denied or reduced benefits, citing coordination-of-benefits provisions that treated payments from a special needs trust—funded by a $7 million settlement against the school district—as other coverage reducing the plan's liability. After a bench trial, the court held that the plan abused its discretion by unreasonably interpreting the plan language to encompass the special needs trust, which was established under California law to supplement public benefits without displacing private insurance obligations. The court vacated the prior benefit determinations and remanded the matter to the plan for a fresh decision applying the correct interpretation.

healthcarelabor & employment

The case involved plaintiff Mark Gable alleging that the television show "My Name is Earl" infringed his copyrighted screenplay "Karma!" by copying its story of a man redeeming himself through good deeds after a life of crime, assisted by a supernatural figure. The court granted defendants' motions for summary judgment. The reasoning was that Gable failed to provide evidence that the creators had access to his screenplay, and even if access were assumed, the works were not substantially similar in their protectable elements, as the plots, characters, and specific scenes differed significantly in expression and details.

property